About this role:
Wells Fargo is seeking a highly experienced Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership across enterprise data platforms, distributed systems, AI solutions, and cloud-native application architectures. This role will drive the strategic direction for data engineering, real-time analytics, AI-enabled solutions, and microservices platforms that power critical business capabilities at global scale.
In this role, you will:
Act as an advisor to leadership to develop or influence applications, network, information security, database, operating systems, or web technologies for highly complex business and technical needs across multiple groups
Lead the strategy and resolution of highly complex and unique challenges requiring in-depth evaluation across multiple areas or the enterprise, delivering solutions that are long-term, large-scale and require vision, creativity, innovation, advanced analytical and inductive thinking
Translate advanced technology experience, an in-depth knowledge of the organizations tactical and strategic business objectives, the enterprise technological environment, the organization structure, and strategic technological opportunities and requirements into technical engineering solutions
Provide vision, direction and expertise to leadership on implementing innovative and significant business solutions
Maintain knowledge of industry best practices and new technologies and recommends innovations that enhance operations or provide a competitive advantage to the organization
Strategically engage with all levels of professionals and managers across the enterprise and serve as an expert advisor to leadership
Required Qualifications:
7+ years of Engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated through one or a combination of the following: work experience, training, military experience, education
Desired Qualifications:
The ideal candidate is a recognized technical leader with deep expertise in Data Engineering , Java/Spring Boot Microservices , and Generative AI , capable of influencing architecture decisions, mentoring senior engineers, and shaping long-term technology strategy.This role requires balancing innovation with operational excellence, ensuring platforms are secure, scalable, resilient, cost-efficient, and aligned with business outcomes.
7+ years of software engineering experience with significant leadership responsibilities.
7+ years designing and delivering large-scale data engineering solutions.
7+ years leading cloud-native architectures.
3+ years of hands-on Generative AI implementation experience.
Experience building mission-critical platforms supporting finance, treasury, risk, or regulatory functions.
Experience training, fine-tuning, and deploying LLMs in enterprise environments.
Experience implementing enterprise-wide AI governance and responsible AI frameworks.
Experience leading large modernization programs involving legacy-to-cloud migration.
Proven track record influencing CIO, CTO, and senior executive stakeholders.
Data Engineering Leadership
Own the strategic direction and modernization of enterprise data platforms.
Responsibilities
Design and evolve scalable data architectures including: Batch processing
Streaming pipelines
Real-time event processing
Lakehouse architectures
Data Mesh and Domain-Oriented Data Products
Lead architectural decisions involving: Apache Spark
Kafka
Iceberg / Delta Lake
Snowflake
Databricks
Flink
Cloud-native data platforms
Define standards for: Data quality
Data lineage
Metadata management
Observability
Governance
Data Security and Compliance
Drive modernization initiatives from legacy data platforms toward scalable cloud-native architectures.
Software Engineering Leadership
Provide technical leadership across enterprise application platforms and distributed systems.
Responsibilities
Design and govern enterprise software architecture using: Java
Spring Boot
REST APIs
Event-Driven Architectures
Kafka
Distributed Systems Patterns
Define…